How one news release sunk Odd13 Brewing’s Hanuman IPA

Ryan Scott of Odd13 bent to the will of a self-described Hindu leader in Nevada (Mark Leffingwell/Daily Camera)

Of all the disputes lately about beer names, this is one of the oddest.

It features not a trademark disagreement but a self-styled Hindu statesman from Nevada with a track record of courting publicity and a small Lafayette brewery that held a contest to name an IPA.

The whole affair ended quickly, peacefully and without the two parties even communicating with each other.

Rajan Zed, who describes himself as an acclaimed Indo-American and Hindu statesman and interfaith advocate, issued a news release Sunday out of his home base in Reno, Nevada, with the headline, “Upset Hindus urge withdrawal of Hunaman beer in Lafayette.”

The target was Odd13 Brewing’s Hanuman Single-Hop IPA, which borrowed the name of a popular Hindu diety that is a cross between monkey and man, the “monkey god.”

The diety is meant to be worshiped in temples and in home shrines “and not be used in selling beer for mercantile greed,” Zed’s release said. He said the inappropriate use of Hindu deities, concepts or symbols for commercial uses hurts devotees. The release identified brewery owners Kristin and Ryan Scott. It also identified the town mayor and noted that Lafayette is known for its Oatmeal Festival.

The name of the beer, Scott said, was suggested by someone who studied Hinduism and Sanskrit at CU-Boulder. The brewery names its beers after superheroes or characters, and the diety’s storied ability to change shape fit well with a beer meant to return brewed with different hop varietals, he said.

Rajan Zed of the Universal Society of Humanism, which is seeking federal nonprofit status (provided by Zed).

Since then, Zed has criticized singer Selena Gomez for wearing a bindi (the traditional Hindu forehead decoration) in a music video, pressed for a yoga room at London’s Heathrow airport … the list goes on and on, generating Nexis hits in the thousands.

I talked to Zed on Tuesday. He said that as with other causes he has taken on, he was tipped to the Odd13 beer’s existence by a concerned Hindu. I asked him whether all Hindus would take offense.

“There will be differences of opinion,” he said. “But as a Hindu leader, I have to weigh it and go with a majority of what I think Hindus will think. In Hinduism, we don’t have a Vatican. We don’t have Salt Lake City. There is no Hindu leader who can say, ‘I lead all the Hindus.’ There is no uniformity of opinions, either. Many people might say it’s OK.”

Zed is president of an organization called the the Universal Society of Hinduism, based in Reno. There are 793 nonprofit Hindu organizations in the United States recognized by the IRS according to Guidestar, which stores exhaustive records on nonprofit groups. Zed’s group is not one of them.

The group has applied for tax-exempt status, according to records it filed with the Nevada Secretary of State’s office. The society listed no revenue and no expenses with the state. Its total assets: $85.40.

Zed said he won’t begin soliciting donations until the group gains tax-exempt status. He said he has no employees, either. For now, all costs are coming out of his own pocket, he said.

Scott said the brewery decided quickly to just change the name of the beer, which is not a flagship beer, will never be distributed, and was only available in the taproom. The decision had been reached, he said, by the time the Boulder Daily Camera called Monday. Odd13 may hold another contest, he said.

Zed commended the brewery for its quick response and understanding. He said he didn’t contact the brewery to air his concerns because “there are so many things to do. You need a lot of time for that.”

Suhag Shukla, executive director and co-founder of the Hindu American Foundation, said her Washington-based advocacy group contacts organizations directly if it has concerns about an issue, an approach she described as “quiet diplomacy.”

Going public right away “can push someone into a corner and they may not want to change,” she said. “Direct engagement often delivers more fruits of compromise than, say, direct public pressure. That is not to say public pressure does not have its place.”

Would Scott have preferred being contacted by a person instead of tweeted press release?

“Yes and no,” he said. “In retrospect, we’ve gotten a lot of compliments, especially from local Hindus, who think we handled the situation really well. I would have preferred he just reach out to us and made it a non-issue. I appreciate people think we handled it well. But I would rather there was nothing to handle.”

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